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Austin to San Antonio Commuter Rail Service

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The Austin to San Antonio Inter-Municipal Rail District was created in the mid 1990s to promote the implementation of passenger rail service between Georgetown, Texas and San Antonio, Texas.  It is known as the ASA.  Congestion on I-35 argues for steps to relieve it, especially during the morning and evening rush hours in Austin and San Antonio as well as between the Capital and Alamo cities.  A toll road was opened last year to route traffic around Austin.  It is part of the solution, but clearly more needs to be done.    The District, which includes the communities along the Union Pacific Line from Round Rock to San Antonio, plus Georgetown, has commissioned a series of studies to determine the feasibility of establishing commuter rail serve between Georgetown, which is 30 miles north of Austin, and San Antonio via Austin.  The studies have identified a major stumbling block to the implementation of the ASA.  Congestion on the Union Pacific!  The answer to the problem on the UP, which must be dealt with if the passenger rail version is to become a reality, according to Texas transport planners, is to build a new by-pass rail line around Austin to connect with the Sunset route east of San Antonio.Last week the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the UP released their estimates of the cost to relocate the UP line.  It is $2.4 billion or approximately $16.5 million a mile.  In addition, another $600 million would be required for track, signal, and station upgrades to handle commuter rail service on the existing line between Georgetown and San Antonio.  And it would cost approximately $41 million a year to operate the commuter rail service.  TxDOT and UP estimated that the investment would produce benefits totaling $1.4 billion over 20 years, although the quantification of the benefits required estimates that are based on shaky assumptions.  For example, the authors of the study estimated that motorists would benefit by reducing their wait time at existing rail crossings.  Finding good numbers for this type of estimate is problematic.  Commuter rail and light rail makes sense when existing or abandoned railway rights-of-way can be upgraded to accommodate it.  But as this study shows, starting from scratch is expensive, unless one believes that a $1.4 billion return over 20 years on an investment of approximately $3 billion is a sound financial strategy.      Meanwhile, TxDOT has partnered with Amtrak to study the feasibility of providing additional intercity passenger rail service between Round Rock and San Antonio on the existing UP route.   Given the congestion on the route, I don't see how they can pull it off, but hopefully they will figure out a way to do it.  The one place where passenger rail makes sense is in relatively short, high density corridors.  ASA is not there yet, but it is getting close.
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